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Now several companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, are trying to bridge the gap between mobile browsing and desktop purchasing with a simple “buy” button.
Buy buttons have been around since the early days of the Web, of course, notably with Amazon’s “One-Click Ordering,” where people set up a button that runs their credit card and ships whatever they have bought to a designated address.
But these new buy buttons allow technology companies to act as middlemen between mobile shoppers and retailers — eliminating aggravating typing on a phone’s touch screen and extending one-click ordering to thousands of small retailers....
We all know that 2015 has scared everyone, and there are a lot of new eCommerce trends that are emerging in the market. We can say that it is a fun time to be in the eCommerce industry for all the businesses, who are thinking about turning their brick-and-mortar store into an online store.
If you have decided to enter in the eCommerce market, there are numerous trends that you have to adopt to give tough competition to your competitors.
Let’s have a look at 2015’s top eCommerce trends that you should check-out and adopts to give sturdy competition to your competitors....
Ebay enterprise with CFI Group conducted a survey on over 500 shoppers to understand who is shopping online, how they are using the Internet and what matters most to maintain their loyalty.
“We all know that shoppers are using the Internet to research and purchase products these days, but as retailers are trying to catch up to the new fast-paced landscape of real-time omnichannel shopping, it is important to understand the online methods consumers are using and for what purpose,” said the report.
The study found that customers are using multiple channels when shopping. When asked how often the shopping is done using both the store’s website and physical locations, 96% said the utilized both channels, and 49% use both channels frequently. Moreover, 32% are now using mobile devices to shop, which is said to grow in future. This shows that, to boost their sales, retailers need to be aware of synchronized communication across all channels...
Consumers today conduct a great deal of research about the products they are buying and brands are being asked to fulfill a multitude of informational needs.
Argos, a UK-based consumer goods and ecommerce retailer, is exceptional in that they maintain an active presence operating across a large range of touchpoints, both digitally and via traditional media. This case study takes a close look at how Argos reaches, influences, and engages consumers as they go through their purchase journeys....
Consumers want more from brick-and-mortar stores than they can get online, where shopping is faster, easier and often cheaper, members of a panel on retail. They're looking for human interaction, said Rachel Shechtman, founder of Story, a boutique in Chelsea. "The future of retail is about entertainment and community," she said. "It's really about the surprise and delight factor."
Her shop, Story, experiments with retail as a media channel, and is managed like a magazine, according to Ms. Shechtman. It has sponsorships, like magazines have ads, and it's completely redone every few weeks with new products and designs. Most of the shop, Ms. Shechtman says, is pure experience, with a smaller portion where customers can shop....
A few years ago, two marketing professors conducted a study involving jams. It’s since become a landmark. The researchers set up a tasting booth in a supermarket and offered jams to customers. On one Saturday, they offered 24 flavors. On the next Saturday, they offered 6 flavors.
What happened? The results are nuanced, so pay attention.
When 24 jams were available, 60% of the customers stopped for a taste. When 6 jams were available, 40% of the customers stopped for a taste. So it’s better to offer more options, right?
Not really. Of the 60% who tasted one of 24 jams, 3% made a purchase; of the 40% who tasted one of 6 jams, 30% made a purchase. Here’s the key takeaway: 31 people purchased jams when they had 6 options, and 4 people purchased jams when they had 24 options. That’s nearly an 8X difference.
In other words, when you offer more products for sale, more people will visit your store, but fewer people will make a purchase. And as great as it is to get lots of visitors, your sales are what matters.The researchers suggest that when there are too many options, customers get into a state of “choice overload,” or “analysis paralysis.” Sometimes when choices are too great, people choose nothing at all....
Between the confluence of the Web and e-commerce and the rise in hours at work for U.S. workers, brick-and-mortar visits are becoming worryingly infrequent. Online shopping is rapidly overtaking high-street sales with the U.S. Department of Commerce spotting a 3.4% quarterly pickup in e-commerce sales compared to 0.6% for brick-and-mortar retailers during the fourth quarter of 2013.
However, thanks to modern technology, traditional retailers now have a chance to fight back. Strategy consulting firm Control Group put together a thorough report examining several emerging trends in retail technology. Especially, state-of-the-art technologies that make dynamic pricing for brick-and-mortar retailers could indeed enable them to turn the tide in the battle of clicks versus bricks....
Mobile, social, and the cacophony of modern interruption marketing has transformed the retail path to purchase, and forced retail marketers to focus on building lasting relationships that benefit customers.
...“Now, because of smartphones and tablets, marketers need to fundamentally rethink things. Shopping is becoming an iterative rather than a serial process. Consumers no longer go shopping, they always are shopping.”
Among the less frequently discussed casualties of modern marketing is the path to purchase.The path to purchase is not a sidewalk leading from the shopper’s front door to a store; it is a cycle repeated over and over, and it requires marketers to take a different tack....
Retail technology is rapidly evolving to create a more convenient, fun and immersive in-store and online experience. Here are ten trends to look out for in 2014.
Though there’s no doubt we’re still a nation that needs to be careful with its cash, the dark clouds of recent austerity are starting to float away to reveal a more optimistic, more promising future.
We’re not out of the woods yet, for sure, and the vast majority of people still feel we’re in a recession, but market confidence is starting to return and the masses are beginning, albeit cautiously, to dip into their wallets again.
This change in consumer attitude is also being complimented by the raft of new technology designed to make the shopping experience more accessible, convenient and fun. Peaks and troughs and trends are prevalent in practically every element of society – and retail is absolutely no different....
In his new book The New Rules of Customer Engagement, 6 Trends Reinventing The Way We Sell, Daniel Newman drives home not just the trends, but what they mean for business and those responsible for driving revenue and creating satisfied customers, i.e. those in the marketing space....
Retailers have discovered reverse showrooming is more common than showrooming, and they're using it to regain ground.In the past few years, as online shopping exploded and smartphones became the norm, the showrooming phenomenon — consumers using their phones to comparison shop in stores — seemed poised to gut the revenue of offline retailers.
But now a new report from BI Intelligence finds that retailers have discovered "reverse showrooming," or "webrooming," which is when consumers go online to research products, but then head to a bricks-and-mortar store to complete their purchase. ...
Gone are the days when a mobile strategy was far down on the priority list—a “nice-to-have” bonus for retailers. With a mobile audience of 874 million potential customers, leaders in the ecommerce space are making serious investments to maximize the new opportunities created by the technology we carry with us everywhere we go. In fact, 53% of retail marketers position mobile as their number one strategic priority, according to a Shop.org report.
eMarketer recently interviewed top marketing executives from Williams-Sonoma, Sephora, Gilt.com, and Macy’s to dig into the trends, challenges, and opportunities they’re seeing in the increasingly digital world of retail. Mobile is still a rapidly evolving channel, but here are four key takeaways on what these top retail executives had to say about the exciting digital possibilities that lie ahead....
Results from Thanksgiving weekend confirm that e-Commerce and mobile accounted for more sales than any previous year, and industry experts predict that more consumers will turn to the web to shop through New Year’s Day.The Adobe Digital Index, which examined 180 million visits to 1,000 retail web sites, reported that Thanksgiving Day generated close to $1.1 billion in sales, marking the first time the day generated more than $1 billion. ComScore reported that Thanksgiving Day revenue totaled $766 million, and ranked Cyber Monday as the heaviest U.S. online spending day in history at more than $1.7 billion.“.…
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How much is your customer worth?
One approach would be to re-focus acquisition strategy based on the Customer Lifetime Value or CLV. According to the 2015 RJ Metrics Benchmark report, a new e-commerce customer is worth, on average, $154 in their first year. This number varies by type of retail. For instance, the categories of housewares, food and drugs tend to be above this average.
What is more interesting is that only 32 percent of these new customers are likely to make a second purchase in their first year. The report also reveals that the top 1 percent of customers are worth 18 times more than the average customer, which equals about $2,772.
Armed with this information, an e-tailer can easily calculate ROI on programs targeting new customers vs. programs targeting your biggest fans—the top 5 percent....
There’s a tsunami of change coming toward the retail business environment and interaction with the customer that may turn today’s approaches and strategies in completely new directions, impacting everything from store design to communication with consumers.
It’s termed “living services,” and according to a new Accenture report it will let retailers deploy less intrusive customer experiences while boosting customer engagement and fostering stronger and faster sales.
The report provides information on how some brands are already putting ‘living services’ to work within the retail spectrum. One is example cited is how fashion retailer Nordstrom is determining store merchandising now on a weekly basis through tracking and gauging consumer product interest using the social network tool Pinterest.
“Living services will allow retailers to move away from the industry’s standard scenario of bombarding shoppers with offers on arrival at a location. By working with Pinterest Nordstrom is also providing staff with an iPad app to make it easy to show customers trending products and merchandise live,” stated the report.
The technology enabling “living services” is now mature enough for brands to create and deliver them at scale, the report said....
Most consumers (85%) globally say that they have used their smartphone in-store, according to the DigitasLBi Connected Commerce study.
This is an increase from 72% just a year ago.
And it’s not only using a smartphone in a store but the rather the impact it’s having.
The majority (55%) of smartphone users say the Internet and smartphones have changed the way they shop in a store.
Perhaps more significantly, 77% of Internet users have been influenced by mobile during the purchase process....
ey first came to the world’s attention 12 months ago with the launch of Apple’s iBeacons in the US. This launch was closely followed by another defining milestone: the Regent Street project in the UK, a first of its kind now in full swing.
Soon after, as I was talking to two outdoor media owners, they were telling me about their plans to bring the technology to the Australian market – both understandably racing to be the first in market given its huge potential for highly-targeted mobile marketing.
Plenty has been written since on how the technology works and its marketing possibilities. For my part, I am genuinely excited about its many benefits. Yet there are some drawbacks to be mindful of also....
One of the bigger implications of our new mobile world is the hurt it is putting on the retail supply chain.
There used to be a day when the only way a consumer could get a product from a specific brand was to find it in a store. That isn’t true anymore. With so many brands now reaching the consumer directly and the expectations of the consumer reaching orbital requirements, what will happen to the legacy supply chains still being used by most retailers today?
RSR released a report on the impact that mobile is having on the supply chain and, in case you didn’t know, it has been disruptive and destructive. More change in retail = more opportunity for differentiation....
Online content is ridiculously powerful. High quality content can communicate that you’re a bonafide expert, turn you into a member of the Twitterati, and make people fall in love with your brand.
Online content is the Internet’s version of a Bosch power tool!
However, just like any power tool, you’ve got to use it carefully. You would never use a power saw for the first time without reading the directions first, right? Well, the same goes for content marketing. If you don’t want to injure yourself (metaphorically speaking), you need to do a little prep work before you start publishing your brand’s content in every corner of the Web.
Instead of reading an instruction manual, though, all you need to do is follow these six tips....
...Millions are spent on content creation and propagation across many channels and media. Multi-channel marketing concepts can be fitted to this alternate use case by helping brand marketers understand the contribution of content investments to an engaged audience of individual consumers. It’s like placing iBeacons on branded content such that marketing spend can be optimized around the messaging that connects best with consumers. Metrics such as open rates and website visitor dwell times become indicators of content quality comparable on a relative basis.It takes a blend of informed creative brilliance and technology enablement to pull this off – key is informed.
To these ends, it’s essential to reign in the insights digital channels capture to fuel a profile of individual consumers that lives, grows, and evolves just like the person it describes. These insights help both agencies and brand marketers inform brand storytelling with knowledge of their consumers beyond superficial characteristics. In this way, you could say consumers help write the story....
A look at a few promising items on the "bleeding edge" of technology that could very well be the "next big thing" in local: wearables, multi-touch attribution, and visual search.
Chapter one of local was centered on business listings’ identity and ensuring that consumers seeking businesses could simply find them. Interestingly, this behavior is very similar to the early days of portal-based Internet search, where consumers used resources to "find" information, pricing, availability, etc. of items that they already knew about. This is fundamentally the definition of directional marketing, connecting buyers with sellers.
As local and mobile search continues to increase and evolve, we are seeing greater adoption of discovery-based searching. These "searcher" and "shopper" type searches help consumers research unknown or partial categories and products in more of the awareness and preference forming portions of the consumer’s discovery path....
Smartphone savings programs, in-store Wi-Fi, and better customer service are some of the ways offline retailers are leveraging their advantages.
E-commerce businesses have upended the retail industry and put bricks-and-mortar companies on the defensive.
But now, many offline retailers are moving to capitalize on their offline advantages. Retailers are actively harnessing a trend that's actually far more popular than online buying, and always has been — 'reverse showrooming' — when people research products online and then ultimately buy in-store....
The way retail customers get their information is changing. Here's how one company helps them make the most informed decisions.
The retail landscape is as competitive an environment as any in the business world. Retailers regularly explore new and innovative ways to attract consumers' attention and stay one step ahead of their rivals.
Above and beyond any traditional methods of luring customers, advancing in-store technology has become a clear standout. Whether it's LCD screens or LED panels, touchscreens, gesture-based software, or 4D projection, retailers now have a plethora of options when it comes to delivering content to consumers through digital installation. Of course, none of these options would be useful in today's world if they didn't have the ability to seamlessly integrate with a consumer's social-media applications and deliver a customized shopping experience....
PNo industry has been more transfigured in the past year than retail. Stores now behave like websites, tracking customers as they browse. American malls have pretty much died (but maybe on their way back to life). And in some parts of the country you can have your milk and eggs home-delivered along with your new iPod on the same day. Those who lead the field strike the right balance between physical and digital, experience and affordability, convenience and quality....
Facebook's Head of Retail Global Vertical Strategy shares his predictions for the evolution of online retail.
Retailers have refined the science of merchandising for hundreds of years, but the disruption of the Internet and ecommerce has been an enormous catalyst of change for the industry--and there are no signs of this slowing.
The art and science of ‘click and mortar’ is just beginning to take shape. In fact, according to eMarketer, more than 80 percent of shoppers who visit an ecommerce site do not know what they want to buy. Which means that in a $15 trillion global retail industry, there is a lot of opportunity.In 2014, merchandising continues to reshape itself with three important trends: Discovery, Seasonality and Compression.,...
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The way we use the internet has changed. We are now mobile internet users and everything is done for us to be able to act the way we were acting before on a PC on our smartphones.